Talk:Composting toilets
I've moved the following text from an anon contributor here for the time being under 'Projects' subheading, but not sure if it is where it really belongs. Can it be successfully integrated into the composting toilet article? Or should it have a new page all to itself? Could certainly do with a good copyedit anyhow... Quercusrobur 19:42, 21 March 2006 (UTC) ola PermieS & ORGANIC GROWERS HOLY SHIT = HUMANUER = FERTILE SOIL MAKING Make new humanuer pooper guidelines like: Pooper = composting toilet suggestions 1. Use toilet seat to sit or squat on 2. Pee in hole while pooping, also just peeing in it 3. After done, sprinkle ½ cup of sawdust/soil in hole 4. Cover hole with lid, imagine fertile soil-making Super-fertility soil making Add soil to sawdust ½ mix for #3 Stir or level poop pile when it get hi hear the hole Add pure soil to poopile, if to much carbon, sawdust, leaves, paper Water poopile, if its too dry Completing poopile bin, when level 1 ft below the hole, then close & Open the empty side to restart the pooprocess. SUPER-FAST FERTILE SOIL MAKING COMPOST report FROM 5 years of experimenting with composting & humanuer, here are some patterns I’ve found.in NW US – Ore. Wash & Mendacino CA. Mostly in Hawaii since ’91 when I began doing serious Permaculutre WWOOFing for 10 yrs or so, plus taking PC Design course in Australia in 2000. Radical & subtle differences in composting in varied bioregions are like gardening, needing different elements combining in growing cycles of fertility, will now explain. In Temperate climates composting is usually slower than in tropics where in am now in Punta Mona, Costa Rica; & Hawaii for 10 yrs, where things grow & compost very fast. But tropical compost is usually lacking trace minerals essential for germinating, fruiting & ripening cycles. In many composting books in US Temp. bioregions their guideline don’t work in tropics. Like Humanuer Handbook claims a year or 2 for fertile composting toilet soil & 3- 6 months for normal composting veggie scraps. I been experimenting with humanuer for 5 yrs now, speeding up soil making to 1-2 months in 5 gal buckets (from pooper) by mixing in soil & minerals with dry or damp sawdust. We find it decomposes best if damp, as microbes don’t work when dry, like in deserts. The essential elements are dampness, carbon/nitrogen ratio & soil into the mix in any composting. Too much water will stop decomposing, as will very dry. Layering compost is essential for fast or no work composting. Humanuer also layering as each poop does with fertile mix to cover it. But too much sawdust, dry leaves &or paper sucks/dissolves the nitrogen into the air. That happened at Punta Mona in 6 mons composting toilet we opened expecting to find some (10-20% soil). But no soil was there, only dry leaves & toilet paper, in their first round of composting toilet on land, they built, but not knowing essentials of tropical humanuering, it failed to produce fertile soil. So we took out the fluffy carbon matter, buried it in pits with wet ½ done humaner to complete soil making, layering it with fresh local seaweed, sandy soil & wood ash minerals. Soon report on those poop pit layering experiments in soil making. In no-work composting, layering is essential, without turning or mixing it together as recommended. I saw opening of 5 year no-work home composting bin, was merely layered grass clippings & kitchen food scraps. It became huge box of rich soil with zillion worms, smelled very rich, like warm wet fertile organic farmland, which he spread & planted into grew fantastic veggies. However for super-fast composting layering with elements help balance the whole decomposing into rich soil. Here at PM we have daily buckets of food scraps, lots of fresh seaweed & horse poop we combine in layers, with green leaves & wood ash as needed. In 2-3 days we get 50-80% rich soil, we sift into our nursery for potting & planting. We also have free-range chickens that dig into our compost mound (pile ina pit) mixing, aerating & pooping in it helps it decompose. We find here that nice dense compost works faster than the hi air flow they recommend in temp. climates, because of constant evaporation in the tropics. So we pee in the compost piles & the humanuer to keep it damp & working, which adds nitrogen which is needed for rich soil. We also tamp & stomp down compost to compress the elements together in fertile soil making. Worms naturally enter the mounds if raw veggie matter is there to make soil. In Hawaii I got humanuer to make soil from 1 yr ignored in 33 gal bucket into I month in 5 gal bucket with current mix of 10% soil with damp sawdust & 1% minerals: wood ash, or crushed coral/oysters, rock dust, etc. of course the varied elements in the minerals effect the soils fertility to grow certain plants we harvest to eat. We even buried fresh humaner buckets 2 feet under out veggie garden worked, but it killed some new tomatoes. So we fully compost it first, or put fresh humanuer buckets on mature fruit trees we cover to decompose. I also add soil & minerals to buckets of kitchen scraps waiting to enter our soil making systems. I find that peoples diet directly effects the quality of poop for fertile soil making. The hi-acid (sweet) diets of many tropical people causes runny poop/diareha, that’s too acidic & carbonic to become fertile soil in composting toilets. We found that in PM first humanuer results of 6 months of composting-toilet explained above. In 20 years of living in Hawaii & 10 yrs of doing PC I’ve found most white & city people have resistance, even disgust with poop & pee. Even hippies living on farm, homesteads & forest, just poop & run, ignoring it before & after covering it with soil, sawdust or leaves. In Chinese medicine, poop reveals ones digestion of their diet thru natural elimination cycle. Dark dense poop, unless constipated, is healthy complete digestion, absorbing the essential nutrients. The smells of poop are repulsive to most civilized folks, from baby-poop fobia origins I think. Anyway, we need to learn from natural smells of food, soil, our body & composting how healthy it is, takes learning & acclimatizing our senses to pure organic smalls of natural soil making. In Permaculture & organic growing we often look, feel & smell soil & see what & how plants grow in it here now, to learn its fertility potential in the micro-climates within our bioregion terrains & watershed cycles. Another resistance to natural cycles is ECOFOBIA – the normal civilized training against raw organic patterns like: bad weather, dirt, the dark, wild animals, blood, mud, body fluids, strange sounds, bugs, lava, storms, earthquakes, cold & wet, direct sunshine, etc. There are commonly blamed as problems to avoid, prevent or fix. Ecofobia makes us unnaturally imbalanced, then getting sick from unknown causes &or blaming weather or germs for causing our ills, not unnatural living. The other pandemic fear is MICROFOBIA = fear of microbes & germs blamed for causing disease. The popular ‘germ theory’ ignores the diet of sick people, pure water, pH of food, drinks, candy, drugs & hi acid energy hurting our liver & healthy body immunity. So we get sick from “total toxic load’ of city living, pollution, over-processed foods, hi stress, fears & abuses. Also Indoorism = living indoors, is normal safe security, over-protected from raw elements of nature, that animals need for healthy living in balance. To be healthy in wilderness & different bioregions than our home, like the tropics, we need healthy balancing our energy & flexible acclimatizing to new climate, microbial & elevation conditions. Now why do millions of travelers get sick in tropics yearly? I find in 20 yrs of research & organic healthy living, getting sick & natural healing its because of hi-acid diets before going & eating sweets, alcohol & baked treats, cooked oils, etc. So 1000s of travelers get infections or heavy diareha from detoxing the junk they ate before traveling, also triggered by new microbes their weakened immune system couldn’t eat or defend. Its been a tradition for centuries of white folks going to topics & getting sick, infections & diareha, or worse. According to organic health awareness & raw fooding movement, those are natural detoxing, tho weakening, painful & scary, if you don’t know how to prevent or heal it with raw organic foods, pure water, fasting, detoxing, sweating, herbs, Macrobiotics, ferments, bitters, massage, herbs, Chi-kung, yoga, hot mineral baths, seaweeds, sunshine, colon cleansing, etc. Hi-alkaline diet is both healthy & healing of hi acid conditions from sweet & toxic city living. But growing & eating our organic foods we can become healthy loving nature giving us the essential elements for daily balancing our flow.